VALDEZ (Historic Information)

A little to the northward are the Susitna and Kuskoquim basins, also richly mineralized, and destined to be a farming country equal to or better than the Dakotas. In the great bend of the Yukon, traversed by the basins of the Tanana, Kuskoquim, Susitna and Copper Rivers, is a country somewhat like the plains of the Middle West, and in which a couple states like Iowa could and will be carved. More wheat can now be grown there per acre of the hard variety than can be produced per acre in Minnesota; likewise more bushels of potatoes or tons of hay. When the railroads reach the Tanana and Yukon valleys this agricultural district, the coal and oil of Comptroller Bay, and the anthracite beds of Matenuska, one of the busiest ports in the United States will be somewhere near Valdez. Valdez is not an antiquated Russian relic or rotting native village. It is one of the towns born in the gold excitement of 1898. Judge Reed ordered a census a year ago because of an issue between the wets and drys, which showed a population of 1164. The Valdez-Fairbanks trail, early opened by Abercombie, who did more than any one man to discover the wilds of this country since the days of Vancouver and Malaspina, keeps business alive every day in winter as well as summer. Good schools, cable, wire, wireless, stages, newspapers, canneries, mills, copper mines, coal mines, gold mines, oil wells, railroads, cross-country trails and frequent boats, winter and summer, make Valdez a modern, busy little town.